


Redolence

by ToEdenandBackAgain



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Angst, But Baby Angst, Dorks, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Useless dorks, Wine, ineffable husbands, smol angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 08:55:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19664044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToEdenandBackAgain/pseuds/ToEdenandBackAgain
Summary: "I know what you smell like."Aziraphale shouldn't ask. But he does.





	Redolence

It had been eight hours since the Antichrist had named his hell hound and brought forth the beginning of the Apocalypse. For those eight hours, in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop, he and Crowley had been steadily consuming excess amounts of wine. Aziraphale was contemplating the dust particles in the air while Crowley was rambling, hands flailing with usual dramatic flair that never spilled his wine because the glass knew what was good for it. With the Apocalypse pending, Aziraphale knows he should really be thinking about that. Instead, his traitorous mind keeps circling back to the exchange before the revelation. He blinks over at Crowley and drains the wine from the glass in one gulp before refilling it from another on the table- a different vintage but at this point he isn’t sure it matters. This might well be the last week of his life.

“-tried to tell him the thing was making a run for it but did he listen? No.”

“Crowley, my dear?” Aziraphale begins, slightly dazed as he swings his hand in Crowley’s general direction and sloshes wine up and over the glass in his hand. He looks down at the red stain creeping across the carpet and frowns, watching as it bleeds out of the fabric and gurgles back into his glass. Crowley has stopped his tangent and is squinting in Aziraphale’s direction, drinking deeply from the bottle of Chateau Neuf de pape in his hand that he had grabbed after his glass had run empty. Azirahaple lets the silence between them last a beat too long, and Crowley’s eyebrow arches behind he glasses he still has on his face despite the fact that they are alone. Aziraphale’s fingers itch with the urge to take them off but he resists because honestly that would just be rude and even after 6000 years of knowing one another he would never dream of intruding on Crowley’s space that way. Instead, he busies his hand around the stem of his wine glass and attempts to appear nonchalant.

“What do I smell like?”

Crowley frowns.

“Whuzzat?”

Aziraphale takes what he hopes is a casual sip of his wine, “Earlier. You said you knew what I smelled like, and I was just wondering if you could elaborate?”

“Ah-well- I mean- you smell like you,” Crowley says as he lounges backwards in the chaise and crosses his impossibly long legs over one another, “Like... Aziraphale.”

“Yes dear,” Aziraphale says patiently, “But what _is_ that scent, precisely?”

Crowley makes a face. It isn’t a bad face, because none of the faces Crowley ever makes could possibly be considered bad. But it’s face Aziraphale had only seen a handful of times and he isn’t sure what to make of it. It’s the face Crowley makes when there’s something he desperately wants to say but is trying not to say it the way he wants to say it. Aziraphale makes a show of fumbling with his wine glass until Crowley is rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he’s debating whether or not to sober up. Aziraphale hopes, albeit privately, that he decides against it. If Crowley is sober, he should be sober. And he doesn’t much feel as though he wants to be sober right now.

“I don’t suppose you’d let me say your scent is.. ineffable?”

Aziraphale frowns and pours himself more wine, which he hopes speaks enough that he doesn’t need to actually speak because he isn’t sure he could summon the courage. It had taken several bottles of good vintage to even be brave enough to ask the question; he would need several more to needle Crowley about it any further. Thankfully, Crowley seems to have made his choice and slowly drums his long fingers against the neck of the wine bottle. Then he takes his glasses off and Aziraphale promptly feels as though he has made a terrible mistake when he is confronted by long eyelashes and gorgeous golden eyes.

“D'you remember when we were in the south of France? Before the reign of terror and all that? When you were doing all those miracles so I had to come and muck some things up to keep the balance?”

How could Aziraphale forget? It had been one of those rare times before the beginning of Armageddon that they had spent more than a fleeting evening together. Five days in the south of France was burned into Aziraphale’s mind. The meals. The casual strolls through the vineyards. The wine. The long conversations about things that didn’t, in the grand scheme of things, matter at all but also mattered more than anything.

He nods absently and wraps his mouth around the edge of his wine glass before he can let anything betray him. He liked to think back to those days with Crowley when he found himself in the throes of doubt. Crowley thumbs the opening of the wine bottle but doesn’t drink.

“Remember that day… when the sun was out but it had rained earlier. You could still smell it on the plants in the garden outside the village. The air was crisp and when it blew just right you could smell the fresh loaves of bread being baked. Things were warm, but not too warm. Just that little bit of water in the air to stick to your skin...”

“I... I suppose I do.”

There is no ‘suppose’ about it, really. Aziraphale remembers that day like it was only moments ago. He and Crowley had sat in the dappled sunshine of a tree and shared champagne from the bottle while they discussed the best way to fix Aziraphale’s mess of miracles. Crowley had chided him, and Aziraphale had defended himself. They had watched ducks float lazily along the water with their new flock of tiny, fluffy offspring.

Crowley is watching him the same way a predator watches prey, and it thrills him in a way he had only begun to understand in the wreckage of a church. He shifts his weight in the chair and it breaks Crowley from wherever his thoughts had wandered.

“...you smell like that. Near as I can describe, anyway. Little bit of dust here and there. That glue you use on the books. Sometimes like that jam you like to put on the scones with the clotted cream. But always like that day in France.”

Aziraphale doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know how, in all the languages he can speak, how to tell Crowley the truth. That the end of the earth as they know it; the end of the bookshops and the sushi restaurants and the crepes and the wine is all horrible but pales in comparison to the idea that he will never see Crowley again. He knows the word he wants to use, knows it in every language that has ever graced the tongue of man, but he can’t ever manage to just spit it out because Crowley by his side never knowing is better than him knowing and disappearing in disgust.

His stomach lurches uncomfortably and he doesn’t even bother to lie to himself and blame the wine.

“Well,” he begins weakly, plastering a smile on his face as he raises his glass in Crowley’s direction, “I’m glad it’s a pleasant smell, at least.”

He doesn’t notice that a majority of the previously empty bottles are now full again. But he does notice that Crowley looks... lost. He moves to reach out and grab for his hand but Crowley is already standing and heading for the door with his glasses shoved firmly on his face.

“Better get in touch with my lot; find out where we are on the Armageddon business. Do whatever you can to find the Antichrist will you? I’ll give you a call.”

The door shuts so abruptly that it rattles the windows and Aziraphale once again can’t help but feel as though he has made a terrible mistake. He knows Crowley will call. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after. They don’t have many days until the apocalypse after all, and whatever happened here tonight won’t stop them trying to avert it by all means necessary. What scares him is the feeling the is blossoming somewhere low in his chest and his stomach all at once; fiery and soft at the same time; something he once again can’t describe.

Six thousand years worth of feelings suddenly realizing there isn’t much time left.

Crowley’s jacket is still draped haphazardly over the chaise, where it had been thrown off somewhere between the third and eighth bottle of wine. It tells Aziraphale that Crowley had definitely been in a hurry when he left, and it hurts him even more to know he upset him. Perhaps the question had been too personal. Too much. Too forward for something that wasn’t even a friendship, really. Aziraphale runs the soft fabric between his fingers and makes his way to the closet, intending to hang it up with his other clothes so he can return it to Crowley when he sees him again. He will apologise, of course. Say he had too much wine. That he forgot himself. That he’s been on earth so long he forgets sometimes that he can’t just behave the same brazen way the humans do.

The jacket, however, doesn’t make it to the hook. As Aziraphale lifts it up a scent wafts towards him and he hesitates. Crowley had mentioned the books. The binding glue. The scents that lingered on him from his day to day life that couldn’t be helped. Crowley had similar scents that stained his body, and he had done through their years coming across one another. Sometimes flowers, sometimes furs. These days, Crowley smelled of leather and wine, sometimes a hint of potting soil that Aziraphale had never questioned because it wasn’t his business. But he couldn’t for the life of him think of a scent that clung to Crowley like his own skin.

He tells himself it’s the wine that makes him do it. It’s the alcohol warm in his belly that spurs him to bring the jacket to his face and breathe deeply.

Crowley smells like an evergreen bonfire left to smoulder on a cold evening. Crisp but smokey and still sharp on his senses. There is an undercurrent of something harsher, something more rough and dark and he realises abruptly that is brimstone and sulpur. But it doesn’t spoil the scent. Crowley smells like the second time Aziraphale had stumbled upon him in the misty woods of Wessex, not long after their first encounter, and they had shared mead that Crowley had been saving for a while. They had sat among Crowley’s nest of furs and talked about nothing and everything and when a light drizzle of rain had made its way through the trees and Crowley had hissed in indignation, Aziraphale had sheltered him under his wing as though they were still in Eden and they had... existed together.

Crowley smells the way Aziraphale had always imagined he would.

And somehow it feels like hellfire licking at his insides.

The coat goes onto the rack and Aziraphale closes the door.

He doesn’t allow himself to sober up with a miracle. He lets the pleasant buzz become a sharp ache behind his eyes and then he sets to work so that he might have something to tell Crowley when he calls.

He can’t let the world end.

Not now.

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on Tumblr! Same username as here x


End file.
